Abstract
When he lectured before public audiences in the 1910s, American Civic Association (ACA) president J. Horace McFarland liked to talk about a recurring scene from his professional life. In the scene, McFarland sat at his offce desk in Harrisburg, drafting memos to fellow City Beautiful reformers, reading legislative reports concerning scenic preservation, and meeting with his many visitors. All the while, his eyes fitted to the photographs on his off ce walls, images of wild scenery that he had taken on trips into the mountains of northern Pennsylvania. The noise and motion of the city dropped away when he looked at the trees, streams, and distant ridges. The sudden stillness of the offce and the crispness of the photos carried him out of the capital and into the wild. No, he could not make the trip just yet. He was needed in the city, and so the woods must wait.